New review today for Applewood Canyon #9-11 by Brian Canini, as yes, I’m still doing bulk reviews for his shorter comics. It’s my only chance to get through his pile! Speaking of piles (and stop reading here if you don’t care at all about behind the scenes stuff here), I finally got the time/motivation to put all the various piles of comics that I still need to review into one place. Now it’s four piles! Yes, that actually is an improvement. So if you sent me a review comic years ago and wonder why I never got around to it, well, your odds just vastly improved!
Canini, Brian – Applewood Canyon #9-11
June 25, 2024
Good lord, am I actually caught up on one of his series? The last issue in his online store is #11, so unless he’s running behind on updating his store, I just might be current with this one. …I feel like I just wished a new issue into existence. Anyway! I’m still doing the clump reviews for his shorter books (he also sent along some graphic novels, and those will obviously be done one by one, probably before the heat death of the universe), at this point mostly in the hopes that I can also get caught up with Plastic People one of these days. So what’s happening this time around? #9 starts with our heroes (???) getting back into Applewood Canyon the hard way. They’re starting to wonder if the place is really so bad (after they commit just a few murders to get in), but the last page gives them something to work with in that department. #10 has the crew eventually working up the nerve to try to get out of town, but them meeting one of the, uh, “colorful” locals gives them second thoughts about the plan. #11 is a break in the action, as we get some details about the neighboring town (Coconut Valley), using the same method that Brian used way back in the first issue of a narrative voiceover. The cracks in the happy facade are a little clearer here than they were in that issue, but we also know a whole lot more about what’s going on, so that’s as it should be. The man always keeps me guessing, and this series is no exception. 11 issues is plenty to dig into, so give it a shot why don’t you? $1.99 (per issue)
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 6/21/24
June 21, 2024New review today for Dog Restaurant by Brandon Lehmann, in one of those rare reviews where I’m actually talking about the book in the month that it was released. I’m on the cutting edge!
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Posted by Kevin
Lehmann, Brandon – Dog Restaurant
June 21, 2024
Quick, before you read any further: what do you think that title means? I came up with three possibilities pretty much right after seeing that cover, and I’m happy to report that Brandon has them all covered. This one starts off with a married couple trying to figure out where they should go for dinner, which leads to the husband recommending a new place he’s “heard about” called Dog Restaurant. He’s also inexplicably pretending that he’s never been there, but that’s an adventure for the reader. It’s a formal restaurant, so they both get dressed up and head out, speculating all the way about what exactly they’ll be in for. They arrive, settle in… and start to get the sense that something is off. Where are the dogs? Their wondering is interrupted by the server bringing them their dinner, under the fancypants tradition of a covered silver platter, of two servings of “the usual.” It’s at this point (the halfway point of the comic) that Brandon stops the action for a brief warning to the reader. You’re given two options as to how you can continue at this point. You can either read on for the inevitable conclusion to where this has all been leading, or you can skip ahead to the blue colored page for the happy ending. Am I going to talk about either ending? Unless you’re new around here, you know the answer is always absolutely not. I will say that both have bits that got those rare out loud laughs from me (which Brandon seems to be very good at eliciting). I have no clue how the husband thought this was going to go well for him in the “dark” ending, and the questions raised by shoehorning in a “good” ending did an excellent job of showing the dangers of giving the reader what they thought they wanted. Oh, and a quick glance at the publisher’s website shows a small but choice selection, as I’d recommend everything on there that I’ve read (it’s mostly Nick Mandaag and Brandon’s stuff), and it’s yet another reminder that I really need to stop talking about it and just buy a pile of Brandon’s older comics. The fact that I’ve never read his “The Werewolf Expert” feels like a hole in my general reading experience. $10
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 6/19/24
June 19, 2024New review today for The Fifty Flip Experiment #32 by Dan Hill, and no, I still don’t know if it’s “Fifty” or “50.” Maybe we weren’t meant to know.
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Posted by Kevin
Hill, Dan – The Fifty Flip Experiment #32
June 19, 2024
In this issue, a young woman desperately tries to save her friend from falling into a volcano. Welp, that’s it for this review, what’s going on with y’all? Oh, I kid. Ha! Ha. If you’ve been reading Dan’s comics, either for a long time or a short time, you know what a ridiculously incomplete synopsis that is for one of his pages, let alone an entire comic. If you are new and can’t make up your mind about trying out an issue, consider this: are you frustrated with the limitations of language, or even the combination of visual and written language, to convey the ideas that you’d like to express? Well, read a few of his comics, and you’ll quickly see that anything can be expressed through comics, and comics are even better if they have to percolate in your brain a bit before they settle. Got it? OK, for everybody else who already knows his stuff, I wasn’t lying in my earlier synopsis, that is indeed how things start off. See? I even used the first page as a sample to prove it. And so I wouldn’t have to type out that splendiferous title. Jennifer is trying to save her friend, but both of their arms are slippery after their successful battle against the eye monster (battle, sadly, not shown). Naturally, endurance and muscles play a big part of a thing like this, but that can’t do everything. So she reflects on her cult training (I’ll let you discover that part for yourselves), and manages to send out a distress signal. Naturally, this call goes to a larval child, who passes the signal along to bears. But these bears have to pass the message along to the cult, who are very busy with a series of interpretive dances. Sure, but do we meet each of these dancers? You bet! And we also get the names of several dances. But wait, what about the lava? Yeah, I’ll leave that for you to discover too. Also, once again, his intros and outros (although it’s kind of the same thing this time around) are worth the price of admission alone, and will give you a lot of insight into Dan in case you ever find yourself asking “who would make a comic like this?”, whether in a reverent or negative tone. These are always a treat to me, so you can guess where I’m heading: give it a shot. Get a few of them, is my advice, so you can get a real sense of what’s happening here. $5 ($7 with shipping)
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 6/14/24
June 14, 2024New review today for Teen Girl Killed by Lauren McCallister, happy weekend y’all!
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Posted by Kevin
McCallister, Lauren – Teen Girl Killed #1
June 14, 2024
I’ve been wondering what Lauren had been working on since I read her Bad Sex comic several years back, but as is often the case with this brain full o’ artists, I often leave it at wondering and not googling. Well, it turns out that she’s five issues into this series that she started way back in 2016, so it is once again confirmed that I’m a big dummy. I’d swear that she hasn’t had a table at CXC for the last few years. Anyway, who cares about that? This one tells the story of Lauren’s past (unless it’s one of those Seth-esque “kind of true but not literally” type of autobio stories), starting with her in an obvious rut and bored silly at school. Another girl asks her if she wants to hang out sometime (at that age when it was just that easy), and Lauren’s life changed considerably. She was introduced to a game called “dare or dare” pretty much right away, which is just what it sounds like: truth or dare without the truth. It immediately got sexual, which sounds about right for high school kids, and which leads later to a belated changing of the rules to ban that kind of thing, as it also had the potential to get rapey in a hurry. The rest of the comic is mostly teenage meandering, with subtle but huge milestones piling up all around her. First time drunk, first time (?) being yelled at by the parents for staying out late, getting the boy she liked stolen out from under her by her own friend, those sorts of things. It feels to me like there’s an undercurrent of distance here, which makes sense considering the fact that Lauren is probably a decade out of high school (I’m guessing based on information in her last book), and it also helps this book from devolving into a coming of age cliche. It’s also the first of five issues (so far), so who knows where things go from here. It’s a hell of a promising start though, and yes, I clearly should have bought more than one issue when I was at Laughing Ogre today. Oh well, now I have an excuse to go back. Oh, and that title? No idea. Maybe it comes into play in a literal fashion later, maybe not. Read more to find out! $6
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 6/13/24
June 13, 2024This week just about got away from me, but here’s a new review for Eyeland #13 by Nick Forker.
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Posted by Kevin
Forker, Nick – Eyeland #13
June 13, 2024
It looks like that tricksy Nick Forker has been working on a longer story, so my usual plan to randomly review his issues is not going to work anymore. But hey, this one is comprised of a few short pieces, so I’m going to cheat this time around before going back to them sequentially. More information than anybody would ever need or want, that’s the Optical Sloth promise! Like I said, this is a collection of shorter pieces, with one story that’s obviously part of a bigger narrative. There’s some talking cat and dog mayhem to start things off (if you consider a calm conversation to be mayhem), a peek at some actual aliens and their exact level of competence, a badger confronting several animals in what is a clear attempt by Nick to justify drawing a whole bunch of animals (no shame here, the man can draw all sorts of animals damn near photo realistically), the piece that’s part of the bigger story (that’ll make more sense when I go back through the other issues, but it looks like our hero is headed to the real world), and a bit of commentary on the quality of the drinking water in various cities in the U.S. He’s not wrong, and it would be nice if ANY CITY took pride in their water. Finally there’s a personal story about the time he got beat up about 20 years ago, the damage it did to him physically and mentally, and what it feels like to sneeze when your jaw is wired shut. That image of him on one knee, trying to play off the pain as his friends looked on, is rough to look at. He also goes into his reasoning for talking about this now, and how our identities are a construct of the stories we tell ourselves. I’d recommend going and watching the talk Dan Clowes gave at CXC 2023, as he really dug into the unreliability of memory and how tough it is to nail anything down when the other people who were part of those memories have passed away. What does that leave you with? Anyway, yes, this is another really solid issue, and he’s apparently stuck forever (with Brian Canini and a few others) on the list of artists that I just can’t seem to keep up with here on this blog. Still waiting on that eccentric billionaire that decides to keep me as a pet just so I can read comics and write about them forever… $7
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 6/6/24
June 6, 2024New review for the very last of the mini kus adjacent books, Good Night and Sweet Dreams! by Teddy Goldenberg. Until next time, mini kus!
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Posted by Kevin
Goldenberg, Teddy – Good Night and Sweet Dreams!
June 6, 2024
Good Night and Sweet Dreams!
This is a collection of short stories, almost entirely about situations that are just bizarre and otherworldly enough to make you feel uneasy, like they couldn’t really happen but still might one day. Dreams, in other words, which I guess is right there in the title. Stories include showing off a revolutionary way to make comics (but having it fail when the pressure is really on), an attempt to salt the earth to help plants grow and the effect it has on everybody involved, a conference where our hero is forced to try and sleep in the lobby before getting rid of his pants and attempting to find a bathroom (in that order), and being young enough not to care about a serial killer on the loose, not that that’s guaranteed to keep anybody safe. The heart of the book, to me, was Prison Laps. Our hero, as part of a mysterious prison sentence, was forced to run laps around his old hometown. Which was fine, until the route changed to force them to go near the scary hotel. It was nerve-racking but manageable, but then the route was changed again to force them to go THROUGH the hotel. Our hero speaks out against this, which doesn’t go well for him. Finally he reaches the roof and the sample page below happens. I won’t spoil the ending, but I will say that it’s one of the times that this book got an audible laugh out of me. The reason may surprise you! It’s a damned solid collection of stories, and after looking at his website I’m really curious about that Cobra parody as well. Give it a chance, why don’t you? $15 (ish)
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 6/4/24
June 4, 2024It’s the triumphant return of Matt Kish, and a new review for Spudd 64 #5!
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Posted by Kevin
Kish, Matt – Spudd 64 #5
June 4, 2024
Spudd 64 #5
I’ve been robbed! That’s the only reason I can think of as to why my copies of Spudd 64 #3 and 4 are missing, anyway. I had it all planned out for this lazy Sunday morning: grab all of the previous issues of the series, read them, then read the new one and talk about it. Simple! But since I could only find #1 and 2 (I have copy #4 of the 25 copy print run for #1, in case anybody was curious), I’ll have to go with my own reviews to remember the other issues. Terrifying. This issue is Matt’s return to the world of Spudd 64, and since the last issue of it came out in 2007, I’d strongly advise you to at least read my reviews of those issues before going on. Matt was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease recently, but he’s been wanting to return to this world for ages, so he went with a minimalistic approach with his art. Have no fear though, this is still very much the world of Spudd 64. This issue starts with Hassan picking up the unconscious body of Spudd 64 from space, where’s he’s been drifting since the end of issue #3. Don’t take my word for it, Matt was nice enough to include synopses for the previous issues at the end of the comic. He also includes a couple of other comics in the timeline, including one that’s still unpublished, so he clearly has big plans. Hassan takes a leisurely journey through space, sees several odd and wonderful sights, and is eventually shot down and crash lands on a strange planet. It turns out to be a peaceful world, but Spudd didn’t survive the crash landing, so Hassasn sadly buries him. But after several years a tree grows from the grave of Spudd, and it happens to have a creepy face on it. Could this be the end of our hero? Well, that would be a heck of a thing to come back to a series after 17 years away, wouldn’t it? This is a quiet, contemplative issue, and a very welcome return to this world. I didn’t touch much on Hassan’s time on the world, but it’s all about exploring and coming to terms with the fact that he’ll probably never leave that world. I’m not seeing an easy place to buy this online, but get in touch with the man, maybe he even has copies of previous issues to help you complete the story so far. As for me, I’m going to find a spelunker to go through my comics caves to find those two missing issues… $3
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 5/31/24
May 31, 2024New review today for For Thee by Suzanne Baumann. Hey look at that, a full week of reviews! No, I’m still not through the SPACE pile, but I’ll sprinkle the rest of ’em in with the other reviews. There’s still a new issue of Spudd 64, after all, which should come as welcome news to a bunch of you. But I can’t review that without going back and reading the previous issues, now can I?
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Posted by Kevin
Baumann, Suzanne – For Thee
May 31, 2024
Did I go into SPACE this year hoping to get a new comic from Suzanne? Of course, it’d been at least 5 years, maybe more. But I’m also a sucker for a good collection, so here we are. This is a collection of the minis that Suzanne made specifically to have free comics to offer at cons. She made a new one every year for several years before finding out that the plan was unsustainable, as that’s a whole lot to manage along with everything else that goes into planning for a con. She has an informative introduction for anybody who’s curious about the process, and as somebody who rambles on a regular basis (I’d say “professional basis”, but come on now), I can appreciate an intro that goes into detail about a grammatical error that’s bugged her for years and was only fixed for this collected edition. If you’re thinking that you go to every con all the time and probably have already seen these stories, I kind of thought the same thing, and only two of these stories were familiar. This is a collection of seven stories, dealing with things like a talking teddy bear that gets far too existential with a small child, the joy of skipping and how it’s somehow not for everybody, a detailed strategy session for dealing with whiteheads, getting called out at school after forgetting about the social hierarchy (also kudos for the information on the back cover proving that she was correct way back when), a more realistic love song, aliens at the bar, and the inevitable conclusion of being unable to change your mind. She was correct in her intro, these stories held up really well and I’m glad she put them all out in this collected format. I also saw several minis on her website that I wish I had picked up (two 24 hour comics in a row? Done over a 48 hour period? The mind reels), but hey, there’s always next time. $8
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 5/30/24
May 30, 2024New review today for Anywhere Man #3 by Rob Cooley, and if you can find a website for the man, let me know, eh?
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Posted by Kevin
Cooley, Rob – Anywhere Man #3
May 30, 2024Website (sort of but not really)
Anywhere Man #3
I do love a cautionary tale from SPACE, and this one fits the bill. Because, and this is an easy one: there’s no contact info anywhere in the comic. Sure, this has happened before, but I can usually at least find an Instagram page with some digging. This time around, not so much. There’s the bizarre “history of comics” type page that at least has details of his work, and nothing else. But hey, screw it, I’m still going to talk about the comic. First, a personal note to Rob: if your totals were off by $2 after SPACE, somehow another copy of this issue was shoved into this one. Meaning yes, I ended up with two copies of #3. Not sure if that was you handing me the comics or me grabbing them without paying attention, but my apologies either way, and if I see you at another con I owe you $2. Should I finally start talking about the comic? Yeah, I’ve stalled long enough. This is the story of a planet killing monster (unnamed, I think), but the comic starts off with him worrying about an escaped villain named Mindscare. We don’t hear anything else about that guy, as the entirety of the issue is a fight between Anywhere Man, Star Acer (a local hero) and the planet killer. There’s a loopy Kirby vibe to some of his artwork that I enjoyed, but the story itself is fairly typical superhero stuff, which is not really for me at this point. But hey, that’s just me. If it’s still your thing this issue is pretty well done, although it does hit the “God” talk a little heavy, considering the fact that they’re literally fighting a planet killer and that sort of thing might make one question their faith or even the concept of faith. Overthinker, that’s me! Ooh, my own super hero name. Anyway, if you can find this and if you still enjoy the superheroes, give this one a shot! Hell, if you can track me down you can have one of my extra copies if nothing else… $2
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 5/28/24
May 29, 2024New review for Bad Day For Melvin by Aaron Zvi Felder. Hey, look at that, I’m more than halfway done with SPACE week! Maybe I’ll pull this one off after all…
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Posted by Kevin
Zvi Felder, Aaron – Bad Day For Melvin
May 29, 2024
Oh, poor Melvin, that dude cannot catch a break. Looking around Aaron’s website it appears that Melvin has been a character for awhile now, with him changing here and there as Aaron’s style evolved. Or it’s a bunch of different characters named “Melvin” and I’m just not understanding it because I’m parachuting into a situation where he’s been working with the character for years and I’m doing a quick skim of his website. This particular comic is an epic story about a fairly simple day. Aaron really takes the time to let the situations breathe, whether they’re deadly or mundane, which really helps with the sense of inevitability of the whole story. We start off with a view of Melvin’s normal routine, with a ticking clock problem left in place when he leaves to walk to work. Along his walk a tragedy occurs, as he’s entirely too close to a crashing airplane. He gets away without being hurt (or this would have been a very short comic), but not unscathed, which was plenty for his supervisor to notice and chastise. Our hero then remembers that he left his coffee pot on but, office culture being what it is, he doesn’t get permission to leave, so he has to wait for his lunch break. Is there also an obstacle over his break that prevents him from getting home promptly? Reader, you’d better believe it. He arrives home to the sample image below, which I just could not resist using. From here he returns to work, but as you might have guessed from that last panel, that doesn’t go well either. It’s a “three strikes and you’re out” rule at work, and if you’re wondering if there was also a third strike, there absolutely was, and you wouldn’t guess it in a million years. It’s a spellbinding journey, and I couldn’t help but root for the poor guy even though it was clear that he was doomed. Is this the winner of SPACE so far? Eh, it’s tacky to rank comics like that, but let’s just call it one of the better comics I got from a solid pile of them. $15
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Posted by Kevin
